ToneCheck - Jiminy Cricket for the Maligned Executive

Tone-check-logo

Believe me, Corporate America, you need this.

According to ToneCheck:

Studies show e-mail messages are interpreted incorrectly 50% of the time.* ToneCheck™ is an e-mail plug-in that flags sentences with words or phrases that may convey unintended emotion or tone, then helps you re-write them. Just like Spell Check… but for Tone.

Avoid continuous editing and unnecessary conflict with ToneCheck™.

Now if only there was a "ReasonableRhetoricalArgumentCheck" or "MessageClarityNotCompromisedByPoorWritingCheck" (they should probably work on the name of the last one, unless they're shooting for irony).

Teitur's "Confessions" sets a score to your YouTube videos



One of my recent obsessions has been with the Web's ability to connect disparate artists to tell a single story, specifically artists working in different mediums - like real-life mashups with a purpose beyond being fun and well-executed.  Enter the recent work of Teitur and Nico Muhly, which turns your videos (and video comments) into small music video vignettes:

Confessions is an audio-visual project by Teitur, composer Nico Muhly and the dutch ensemble Holland Baroque Society. About a year ago, these young and talented artists started a challenging project: composing music for YouTube clips. Even the comments were used as an inspiration for the lyrics and in a short time four wonderful songs were created, all matching the video's in a surprisingly brilliant way.

A lovely intersection of video, music and user-generated content.  Learn more at http://www.confessions-tour.com and watch samples below:

LOST characters explain how to make a sandwich

http://www.drafthouse.com/westlakes/admin/Images/lost-logo.jpg

How To Make a Sandwich on the Island:

Jack
1. Gather ingredients
2. Point gun at ingredients and shout “HOW DO I MAKE A SANDWICH OUT OF YOU?!?!?”
3. Breathe heavily through your nose as though you were about to hit ingredients
4. Give up and make the sandwich yourself, and eat it bitterly

Kate
1. Make separate sandwiches, one with peanut butter and one with jelly
2. Take a bite of the peanut butter sandwich, declaring it the best
3. Take a bite of the jelly sandwich, declaring it the best
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 ad infinitum
5. Follow peanut butter or jelly sandwich into grave danger

Sawyer
1. Throw the jar of jelly at wall, sneering “I don’t need no sandwich”
2. Call the mascot on the jar of peanut butter lots of clever nicknames
3. Huff and puff and stomp around and grumble a lot
4. When no one’s looking, make perfect, even, symmetrical peanut butter and jelly sandwich and sit in a corner, enjoying every bite

Locke
1. Sit idly by, believing that the ingredients will find a way to make a sandwich out of themselves
2. Lose faith and make the sandwich anyway
3. Realize that you were the instrument by which the ingredients chose to make a sandwich after all
4. Run around the room and grab everyone’s knives, insisting that their sandwiches will do the same in time

Hurley
1. Make sandwich
2. Eat sandwich
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 ad infinitum

Sayid
1. Procure 23 milligrams of uranium-20
2. Set hadron supercollider to eight megajoules
3. Program a sandwich-making macro using Cobol or Visual Basic
4. Act all tough-like

Desmond
1. Eat sandwich
2. Call the sandwich “brother”
3. Place peanut butter slice over jelly slice
4. Spread jelly on the other slice
5. Spread peanut butter on one slice
6. Take two slices of bread, a jar of peanut butter and a jar of jelly

Ben
1. Steal someone else’s sandwich
2. Claim you coerced them into making the sandwich for you all along
3. Say you’ll tell them everything if they make you another sandwich
4. Stare at them all creepy-like

Libby
1. Lay out plans for one of the most intricate, fascinating, and delicious sandwiches of all time
2. Just as you start making it, get shot

Danielle
1. Apply peanut butter
2. Disappear for eight months
3. Apply jelly
4. Disappear for eight months
5. Eat sandwich

Claire
1. Mmmmmmm, peanut butter

Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse
1. Make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich
2. Have someone take a bite, then tell them it’s a baloney sandwich
3. Make up a whole bunch of other shit, then say you had planned it all along
4. Buy a few yachts

Music Between NPR Segments

Npr-logo

http://www.npr.org/templates/music/

"Looking for a song you heard between stories on one of NPR's news programs? We call it a "music interlude." To hear the music again and get artist, title and CD information, select the program you heard the music on from the list below."

Or check out "Music Interludes View":

"On any NPR news program page, click the "Music Interludes View" tab to see a music-centric version of the show page, with the emphasis on song title, artist and CD information. You can click to hear music directly -- or to purchase a CD."

Sure, it's not the most exciting music known to man (or even known to NPR), but the fact that the site includes several ways of finding the music is great.  I still struggle with WXPN's online playlists, especially since they exclude anything heard on World Cafe Live.